Comics #800 + #801

Super-wonderful-mashup time!

Source Comics

800

801


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So I figured since 800 and 801 are basically the same comic (early in the morning, a bleary-eyed non-nerd attempts to relay the past night's happenings to the Wise Sage Nerd, who passes judgement on the plebeian's activities) I might as well remix the two together. All the cool kids are doing it!

Anyways, 800 and 801 are drenched in condescension, though that's hardly new. The thing is, even though Randy is kinda right (The Rules and The Game are both horrible, and overcomplicating things for personal comfort is ridiculous), he makes no attempt to a) offer an alternative, or b) state something meaningful. It's just "Go away idiots, I don't want to deal with you." I'm sure everyone wants to get rid of the idiots in their lives...which is exactly the problem - everyone already wants this. It'd be like going up to someone and saying, "Yeah, how about those dumbasses, don't they just SUCK?" And yeah, they do, but so what?

Let me draw a corollary here to Bill Engvall, who is kind of famous as a comedian in some parts of the world. He has a routine he does called "Here's Your Sign". I'll direct you to YouTube to find an example.

(Sadly, YouTube fails me in producing a catch-all video)

Okay, done? Now, see the difference? Both are calling out people as idiots, yet Bill Engvall has a purpose to his sketch; by wearing the "signs", the idiots are flagging themselves as people to be avoided. In other words, the sketch is providing a service to the general public.

Now, I don't think Bill Engvall or this routine is ultimate hilarity. I think it's a rather cheap routine, in fact, but it is funny every now and then, for two reasons:

1) Good Content - He typically uses examples of extremely common reactions, making his humor relatable as we can "see" ourselves in the joke.
2) Good Imagery/Form - The mental image of someone walking around wearing an idiot sign is, admittedly, funny because of how absurd it is.*

Compare it again to these two comics. The content (douchebag dating guides and flawed single-use machinery) is, to his target audience, relatable, and for a variety of reasons (one being pedantry, the others being...well, you can guess). The form, however, is horrible. There's no external imagery that enhances the joke. There's no internal imagery that creates a joke. All he is saying is that people who use these things are dumb, and that's hardly humor.

+++

As for the remix itself, I didn't try to resolve the issues with the above joke; rather, I replaced them with character jokes (Megan is crazy in the morning and BHG is a moral clusterfuck).

One thing I wanted to do but really couldn't was include that massive closeup of Rob in panel 2 of #801, but I couldn't think of a conceivable way to do it. I thought of maybe having that as the lead-in panel and then having the BHG/Megan panels placed next to it vertically, but there's really nothing interesting that I could come up with for him to say. Maybe he'd be angry about how long it took him to do something? But then he'd just have a weird outburst at the end which would frankly be a worthless non-sequitur. So I figured I was fine with him being in the background and I would relegate his "joke" (that he spent all night doing a pointless and nerdy thing) to the alt-text.

If I get the inspiration for something better I'll post it and put the original down here. Who knows if that will happen though.

*See also opening to Die Hard 3.

Comic #796

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I've actually had this one sitting around, but I was trying out Pixelmator which saves files in a proprietary format (.pxm) for some stupid reason. It took me a week to figure out "Hey I can just print screen and upload that." Yea, verily, I am far from brilliant.

Anyways, my last post had all the really pertinent commentary I care to share about this comic; otherwise I would like to point out that this xkcd is pretty much all the refutation of the original one would need.

Comic #797

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Oh Linux, will nerds ever not love you?

At any rate, I like the concept of locust attacks, but I don't like the concept of locust attacks feeding into power-tripping hacker fetishes (which is basically xkcd in a nutshell). Besides, based on my experience with the "user-friendly" Ubuntu, I'm pretty sure my remix isn't far from the truth.

+++++

Notes on the last comic (or things xkcd sucks didn't cover):

1. Okay, yes, California has enacted some, uh, "experimental" legislation in the past. California is also bankrupt. I'm sure creating dating registries wouldn't end up high on their to-do list.

2. This just reeks of the worst kind of white-knighting. Guy has one bad relationship, suddenly believes himself qualified to protect all women from all bad relationships, completely ignoring the fact that a) bad relationships can, and frequently do, help people realize flaws in themselves, such that removing them entirely is even more harmful in the long run, and b) claiming to be an expert in all relationships makes you just as much of a douchebag as Seltzer and Friedberg. And hell, at least Seltzer and Friedberg have the first Scary Movie. All you'll ever have is a can of mace being sprayed into your eyes, you arrogant little prick.

3. "such a serial liar"? Pick and choose, Randy. She is either "such a liar" or "a serial liar". The two together make no sense. It'd be like saying "he is such a serial killer" or "he is such a serial code". Neither make sense.

4. Who the hell is White Hat Guy?

[EDIT] Wait, no, xkcd sucks covered #4. DAMNIT. Still, though, WHO THE FUCK IS HE? Also, WHY DO I CARE?

Comic #765

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I was heartbroken when I uploaded this to Blogger and saw what happened to it. Apparently, when I saved and closed out in Graphic Converter, a horrible glitch irreversibly scarred it. I don't know why this happened, but it's extremely saddening. If you can get past how it looks, though, I think you'll find one of my best comics yet.

Anyways, as you who have read my first post know, I try as best as I can to work within the framework of the source comic when I make my remixes. Notably, that means I don't use assets from other comics (outside of Megan's hair and BHG's hat), but that also means I try to keep the same basic storyline as the original. It makes sense (to me, at least) - it's basically a second draft of the original comic.

I bring that up because the entire original storyline was "man prepares to shoot water up vagina". It's important you know what I do for you guys, out of LOVE*.

And ew, the water (which he mixed with semen) is dripping out onto the floor. EW.

By the way, let me give you a brief history lesson courtesy of Wikipedia: the inventor of Homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, died in 1843, over 140 years before Randall was even born. He invented homeopathy in 1796, almost a full 200 years before Randall was born. HOMEOPATHY IS NOT NEW. MOCKING IT IS NOT NEW. Hahnemann *himself* supposedly poked fun at the concept of dilution.

This is worse than Randall mocking JFK over a minor communication error. This is the annoying pedantry that the world hates. Hell, this is blatant hypocrisy, too. Remember last friday when he mocked the hypothetical anthropologists (those highly-trained fake scientists) who might email him critiques of his "misleading" comic? Read today's alt-text again (you can mouse over the original to find it) - he "corrected" a leading magazine for a fake science! He sees nothing wrong with incorrect portrayals of science, I suppose, as long as he is the one to incorrectly portray them. His mind-set is mind-boggling.

By the way, Mr. "Real Scientist" Randall Munroe, while you're finding the correct spellings for flowers on Wikipedia you might as well re-read the article on evolution: *no* belief is selected evolutionarily. Evolution doesn't even select for belief in itself.

I don't want to type anymore. This tires me.





*...of hookers and blow

Comic #764 *UPDATED*

Check out the xkcd sucks blog post. They put it just as well as I could.

So yes, this is another no-remix post. Alas, when you have source material this atrocious there really isn't anything you can do (I almost wrote "subject matter" instead of "source material". I seriously considered keeping it that way.) How about I instead point you to a different project of mine, Large Round Eyes, wherein I write short, one-off flash fiction from the perspective of children. I update it pretty sporadically, but the content's top-notch, promise. It's at least better than this blog's source material. I mean subject matter. I mean ANGRY WORDS.

[EDIT] I caved and made a remix for the comic. I figured, "Hey, that's the whole point of this blog, so I might as well provide some sort of meager validation."



The edit at least makes the nerdy reference explicit. It's the least you can do for your audience who may or may not know about indigenous peoples with poor understandings of abstract quantities.

On the plus side, "One two many" is a nice pun, even if it's handed to you on a platter.

Comic #763

It's perfectly fine. Not the first time he's made the joke, but hey, go check it out for yourself and form your own opinion. As for myself, I'd probably add a chair for the old man to sit in and a beard or hat or something to, you know, mark him as an old man, but it's not really a substantial enough edit to warrant a remix.

In other news, remember that extended commentary I did on that one zombie xkcd? Well, I'm going to beat that horse a little more by pointing to this excellent drawing of Gabe and Tycho I saw on gabeart which I stumbled across when rereading older, circa-2006 Penny Arcade posts. See how nicely it's formatted? But that's not why I brought it up.

Now, one of my points (in my rant) was that the action in a flat shot should only take up about 1/3 of the frame. Clearly the "action" takes up 1/2 of the frame - roughly 400 of the 720 centimeters this picture is in length*. Actually, that's more than half. And I like the picture! I must be flagrantly wrong! Or am I?

If we actually consider how much space Gabe and Tycho themselves take up, we see it's only 350x400cm of the 550x720cm of the entire picture, which equates to just over 35% of the frame. The other roughly 15% of the frame is the pigeon. *In aggregate* Gabe and Tycho only took up a little over a third, so I'm not flagrantly wrong, right? Right. No, wait, wrong. WRONG. The bird is integral to the shot and removing it invalidates the piece - at best it looks like Tycho is going to fall over and they both know it (and aren't doing anything about it because it's KRAZY to fall over). Great comedy, guys! You almost deserve a spot in an xkcd comic!

Anyways, this finding convinces me to make an addendum to my original point - if you intend to have only dialogue or only narration (or you want a flat shot devoid of any prose), you can use 1/2 the screen. If you use both, only use 1/3. I'm still convinced 1/3 is the optimal, but then we can't always have the optimal, and this shot works just fine in defiance of my "rule".

Also, for the record this is what that pic was destined to become.

*When opened in GraphicConverter. Your Mileage May Vary.

Comic #762

For reference, a simile is an explicit comparison via the preposition "like" - "a simile is like a metaphor". A metaphor, conversely, is the same thing without "like" - "a simile is a metaphor". The difference is the degree of similitude; in a simile they're comparable, yet not identical, whereas in metaphor the two are interchangeable (or some quality is implied to be interchangeable).

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I'm kinda disappointed in how this one turned out. The ultimate joke (in mine) is that there's awkward gay tension after he said "I still want a sandwich"; I'm not sure, based on the lack of expressivity of stick figures, that I could've pulled it off in so few panels. At the same time, though, it would've taken an absurd amount of time to do it right (it took me an hour to do this alone in GraphicConverter, which - while still much better than Paintbrush - is about 4x as long as it would take in MS Paint. Glorious, glorious MS Paint.) All-in-all, I feel fine explaining the joke and hoping that perhaps I'm too close to it to see it well, or whatever.

As for the original comic, the dialogue is so mind-numbingly stupid it defies explanation how even Randall thought it would fly. Let's bullet point the action of the comic:

1) Stick Dude In Chair (or Rob) makes a sex joke about a threesome.
2) Megan says she isn't good with metaphor and instead suggests she make a simile instead.
2) She never makes a simile. Instead, she wordlessly leaves to make a sandwich for her patriarchs.
3) Rob points out the astonishing truth that a simile is like a metaphor. If you have even a passing knowledge of analogies (like, if you read the italicized paragraph at the beginning), you know this already.
4) Other Stick Dude (Carl) points out that "simile is like a metaphor" is a simile.
5) Rob then asks for the meaning behind a statement he, Rob, made. Yeah, really.
6) Carl plays along and introduces the word "analogy"...
7) ...which allows Rob to act smug and disseminate his Great Knowledge that similes and metaphors are both analogies for no real reason...
8) ...except to now allow Megan to spout off the mildly clever circular logic that Randall thought up the other day when he was hanging with his Heterosexual/Mathematical Life Partner Steve and making him sandwiches and talking about how easy liberal arts majors have it.

I'll name this list "Obvious Stupidity".

Y'know, there's also a lot of latent anti-feminism in here. Instead of Megan responding to Rob's sex joke with "No, eww" it's "Nah, how about I make a simile?" Unless she's a moron or a slut she would not say this. Hell, even if she was a slut she would be mildly coquettish about it, instead of brushing it off like it never happened. So the moron woman then goes off to make sandwiches for the men after spouting off a second line of dialogue, the existence of which could only be justified as it introduces the word "simile" for the "smart, intellectual" men to logically debate over (in other words, even her dialogue is subserviant to the men). Then, at the very end, she chimes in with what I guess is supposed to be a victorious final phrase, yet is really more awkward, pedantic, idiotic dialogue, the equivalent of which is "Hey guys, I'm still making sandwiches in here! Look at me making sandwiches like a good woman! I also make good analogies! Please love me!"

Now, don't get me wrong here, I don't think the concept of a woman making sandwiches for herself and her friends (or *gasp* as a housewife for her husband) is innately bad or anti-feminine. I've met women who honestly enjoy that - no parental brainwashing or domestic abuse or emotional blackmailing involved. That's not my point. It's that, given the widespread usage and connotation behind the phrase "Bitch, make me a sandwich" - a phrase I and undoubtedly many others thought of after reading Megan's first line of dialogue - and given Randall's extreme white-knighting in so many other comics against, say, the stereotypes of women concerning housework...I mean, you'd THINK he would've picked up on this. But you'd be wrong, because Randall is, in actuality, a misogynist who only sees women as objects for his pleasure. It's okay, though, because he recognizes the TRUE VALUE of his objects, unlike those unevolved apes who use them for icky sex. Heterosexual/Mathematical Life Partners Steve and Randall would never do that! Their sex together, I mean with women, is totally not short and unfulfilling like their penises. No, wait, not THEIR penises, THE penises they saw on those beautiful, musclebound men in the hardcore gay porn they accidentally got from Blockbuster (it was right next to the lesbian porn, they swear!). That didn't stop them from watching the porn all the way through, though (for the plot, of course).

Damn, this comic creeps me out.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, and lest I forget, his usage of synecdoche (in the alt-text) is wrong as fuck.